A couple of blogs back, I said that New Brunswick should target the Arabian Peninsula. These countries have piles of cash to invest abroad to diversify their holdings. They are doing developments all over Europe and the US.

Calgary Economic Development (CED) is coordinating a strategic trade mission to the Middle East in March, to explore the abundant opportunities for Calgary companies to create business synergies in that region. Several Calgary energy and real estate companies will meet with business leaders in Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai from March 1- 6, 2008. Mayor Dave Bronconnier will be accompanying this mission. The focus of the mission will be on clean energy, capital projects and real estate investment.

With us it’s always follow the leader. Take my advice. Eastern Europe. Go to Eastern Europe. Do deals with the outsourcers there to put their nearshore North American IT development centres in New Brunswick.

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Excellent post. Too bad your talents are being monopolized as a community organizers (thank Barack for making that term popular again) whose concentration is with developing “retention retail strategies” for communities with no retail and “make work programs” for areas with no market. With what I see going on in Freddy or Ottawa (local MPs), you would be better off pointing ppl in the right direction globally. Although, I’ll only put in a good word for you with Steve if you expand your views on corporate welfare. ha! ha!

On a more serious note, do you know how many new jobs were created in NB in 2007. I know, another obvious Stats Can question that isn’t so obvious to yours truly. lol

Also, is there Labour force numbers for NB going back to 1999 (in millions employed) and the growth percentage for those yrs.?

You are very generous David. I would say we follow several steps behind the leader. We consider seeking invests from abroad to be looking around Toronto!

But your point is bang on and we have some NB connnections to these places to use as starting points. Atcon has acquired businesses in Scananavia. We have aquaculture relations with researchers and business in Norway. UNB has students from Dubai (and an office there). NB industry is doing business with Eastern Europe. With a bit of reserach, we could find loads of connections to explore and build on.

What is the point of seeking foreign investment when the locals react with a huge hue and cry about “dirty foreigners coming in here and breathing our air and taking our money”. These sentiments are usually reinforced by the Irving media which hounds the prospective investors into succumbing to the Irving monopoly.The investor either braves it out or quits, meanwhile all of this is played out in the newspapers which are then easily accessible online across the world for everyone to read.It just makes us look like red neck hicks and I wish it wasnt so.